Ultimately but not surprisingly, many of these women’s lives were buried as footnotes within the histories of kings and wars and dynasties. The writings of ancient historians such as Appian, Dio Cassius, Herodotus, Jordanes, Plutarch, and Tacitus provided me with intriguing and occasionally contradictory insights into the lives of Cleopatra, Olympias, Boudicca, and their contemporaries. Other queens’ stories hinged on single sources; nevertheless, I decided to include them, since they were too colorful to ignore. The Bible recounted the saga of bad-to-the-bone Athaliah and her mother, Jezebel. The reign of Anula is recorded in the Mahavamsa. The Han Shu (or Book of Han) offered information about the unnaturally truncated reigns of the Chinese empresses of the Han dynasty.
What follows is a complete list of works that I consulted as I worked on Doomed Queens:
Anderson, Mary M. Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1990.
Appian. Roman History.
Baldwin, Peter. Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1999.
Barrett-Graves, Debra, Jo Eldridge Carney, Gwynne Kennedy, Carole Levin, W.M. Spellman, and Stephanie Witham. Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2000.
Book of Chronicles 22-23; Book of Kings; The Bible
Bradford, Ernle. Cleopatra. Penguin Books, London, New York, 2000.
Brosius, Maria. Women in Ancient Persia, 559-331 B.C. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1998.
Brown, Tina. The Diana Chronicles. Doubleday, New York, 2007.
Bury, J.B. History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. Vol. 2. Dover Publications, New York, 1958.
Cavendish, Richard. “Empress Tzu-Hsi's Coup,” History Today, Vol. 48. September 21, 1998.
Collingridge, Vanessa. Boudica: the Life of Britain's Legendary Warrior Queen. Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY, 2006.
The Columbia Encyclopedia: Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press, 2004.
Davies, R. Trevor. Spain in Decline, 1621-1700. Macmillan, London, 1957.
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine with Mona Behan. Warrior Women: An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines. Warner Books, New York, 2002.
DeLorme, Eleanor P. Joséphine: Napoléon's Incomparable Empress. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002.
Denny, Joanna. Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen. Da Capo Press, Massachussets, 2006.
Dill, Samuel. Roman Society in Gaul in the Merovingian Age. Macmillan, London, 1926.
Dio, Cassius. Roman History: Vol. III.
Dumas, Alexandre Pere. Joan of Naples: Celebrated Crimes.
Durant, Will and Ariel. Rousseau and Revolution; A History of Civilization in France, England, and Germany from 1756. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1967.
Erickson, Carolly. Josephine: A Life of the Empress. St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 2000.
—— To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette. Morrow, New York, 1991.
Frankforter, A. Daniel. “Amalasuntha, Procopius, and a Woman's Place,” Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8, Issue: 2. 1996.
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
—— The Warrior Queens. New York : Vintage Books, 1994.
Frazer, James George, and Robert Fraser, editor. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994.
Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France. Fourth Estate, New York, 2003.
Garland, Lynda. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527-1204. Routledge, 1999.
Gay, Peter. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. Oxford University Press, 1985.
Green, Peter. Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. University of California Press, Berkeley,1991.
Hale, Edward Everett, and Susan Hale. The Story of Spain: Story of the Nations. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1886.
Halecki, O. A History of Poland. Roy Publishers, New York, 1956.
Halecki, O. editor, R. Dyboski, editor, W.F. Reddaway, editor, J.H. Penson, editor. The Cambridge History of Poland: From the Origins to Sobieski (To 1696). Cambridge University Press., Cambridge, England, 1950.
Hamann, Brigitte. The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Elizabeth of Austria. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York, 1986.
Haslip, Joan. The Lonely Empress: A Biography of Elizabeth of Austria. The Phoenix Press, London, 2000.
Hayden, Deborah. Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. Basic Books, New York, 2003.
Herrin, Judith. Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Herodotus. The Histories.
Ives, Eric. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
Jones, David E. Women Warriors: A History. Brassey's, 2000.
Jordanes. The Origins and Deeds of the Goths.
Kagay, Donald J., editor, and Andrew Villalon, editor. The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus. Brill, Boston, 2005.
Kamen, Henry. Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict. Longman, London, 1991.
Lindse, Karen. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachussetts, 1995.
Livermore, H.V. A History of Portugal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1947.
Longford, Elizabeth, editor. The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1989.
Lund, Helen S. Lysimachus: A Study in Early Hellenistic Kingship. Routledge, New York, 1992.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy. M.W. Dunne, Florence, 1901.
Macurdy, Grace Harriet. Vassal-Queens and Some Contemporary Women in the Roman Empire. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD, 1937.
Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra. Ballantine Books, New York, 2000.
—— Peter the Great, his Life and World. Ballantine Books, New York, NY, 1986.
Mérimée, Prosper. The History of Peter the Cruel, King of Castile and Leon. R. Bentley. Castile, Spain, 1849.
Min, Anchee. The Last Empress. Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Mollat, G. The Popes at Avignon, 1305-1378. Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1963.
Morrill, John, editor. The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.
O'Callaghan, Joseph Y. A History of Medieval Spain. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1975.
Ogg, David. Europe in the Seventeenth Century. Adam & Charles Black, London, 1954.
Ortiz, Alicia Dujovne; translated: Fields, Shawn. Eva Perón. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1996.
Parsons, John Carmi, editor. Medieval Queenship. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998.
Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Routledge, 1989.
Peron, Eva and Laura Dail, translator. In My Own Words: Evita. New Press, New York, 1996.
Plutarch.
Robins, Jane. The Trial of Queen Caroline: The Scandalous Affair that Nearly Ended a Monarchy. Free Press, New York, 2006.
Roisman, Joseph, editor. Brill's Companion to Alexander the Great. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, 2003.
Seagrave, Sterling. Dragon Lady: the Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China. Vintage Books, New York,1993.
Sinclair, Andrew. Death by Fame: A Life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999.
Smith, William, editor. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.1870.
Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. HarperCollins, New York, NY, 2003.
Tacitus, and M. Grant, translator. The Annals of Imperial Rome.
Tillyard, Stella. A Royal Affair: George III and his Scandalous Siblings. Random House, New York, 2006.
Trevelyan, Janet Penrose. A Short History of the Italian People from the Barbarian Invasions to the Attainment of Unity. Putnam, New York, 1920.
Tyldesley, Joyce A. Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt: from Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. Thames & Hudson, New York, 2006.
Voltaire; William F. Fleming, translator. The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version [Ancient and Modern History, V. III France, 1384 -- Europe, 1599]. Volume: 26. E. R. DuMont, Paris, 1901.
Warner, Marina. The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, 1835-1908, Empress Dowager of China. Atheneum, New York, 1986.
Watson, Alaric. Aurelian and the Third Century. Routledge, London, 1999.
Weir, Alison. The Children of Henry VIII. Ballantine Books, New York, 1997.